New Mexico activists join 22-country protest fleet

By Elise Kaplan

The accounts of the U.S. boat to Gaza read like a Bond movie. There are nefarious bureaucratic restrictions from foreign governments, boat chases on the Mediterranean Sea, hunger strikes and Greek jails. Among 37 U.S. activists were Ken Mayers and Linda Durham from Santa Fe.

We go before the world and prosecute a peremptory war on terrorism, daring our neighbors to find fault with our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. And yet we stand idly by while the Khalifa in Bahrain, our political friend, terrorizes its people with bullets supplied by our own arsenals. It is terrorism when a government beats and shoots its own people, scatters them in bloody shrieking masses through the city streets with volleys of gunfire. They have merely asserted what all free people assume as a right—the right to free assembly. How does this terrorism not incite our fury?

Do you remember this story? Back in the day, 2007, President Bush came to Albuquerque. Protesters for peace had to wave their signs out of view of the motorcade, while supporters were allowed front-row seats. Scenarios like this cropped up time and again around the country during Bush's presidency. FOX reported on it in 2003.